


AU Meme: Charley Pollard & Eighth Doctor

by thisbluespirit



Category: Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Audio 016: Storm Warning, Audio 052: Scherzo, Ficlet, Gen, Historical, Meme, Prompt Fic, Red Dwarf fusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:27:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28450905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisbluespirit/pseuds/thisbluespirit
Summary: 10 AU scenarios for Charley Pollard (& the Eighth Doctor) written for a Dreamwidth meme.
Relationships: Eighth Doctor & Charley Pollard
Comments: 12
Kudos: 17





	AU Meme: Charley Pollard & Eighth Doctor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AllyHR](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllyHR/gifts).



> For AllyHR/Human Nature/romanajo123, who requested Charley Pollard (& I think for someone else - sailorkitty? - who asked for Charley & Eight).

**Wild West**

Charley was pretty pleased with herself. She’d always wanted adventure and hooking up with the Lonely Ranger as his latest sidekick matched that idea to a T. She’d had no idea that such strange things existed out in the desert.

She just hoped it would still work when he finally figured out that she wasn’t actually a boy.

**Coffee Shop**

“This isn’t what I call adventure,” Charley said. 

Mr Smith, the owner of the Blue Box Café merely shook his head. “I said it was going to be a great new _venture_. You should pay more attention to what people are saying, Miss Pollard.”

“Yes, quite,” she said. Still, it wasn’t everyone who’d give a job to a runaway with no references, so she wasn’t complaining too much – and life could get pretty weird in Mr Smith’s café anyway. “That isn’t a new blend you’re working on again, is it?”

“Charley! You say that as if it was a bad thing!”

“Well, the last one did cause the coffee machine to explode,” Charley pointed out. “I don’t even want to imagine what you put in it.”

“Nobody’s perfect, Charley. You learn by your mistakes.”

“I suppose that’s why you’re such a genius.”

**Shapeshifters**

“Hello, I’m the Doctor and this is my very best friend Charley. Together we make up the composite form known as the Jelly Being, using our fabulous new powers to thwart megalomaniacs all over time and space. Are you a megalomaniac? Do you know one that needs thwarting?”

Charley clapped her hands over her face.

“Oh, will you look at that, this one ran away as well. How strange.”

“Doctor,” said Charley, raising her head. “You have got to stop doing that. ‘The Jelly Being? I never agreed to that. Besides, what fabulous new powers? That ever since that one time, we merge together at the most inconvenient moments and sort of amorphously exist in a wobbly state for a few minutes before we manage to get ourselves disentangled?”

The Doctor carefully did not put an arm around her. “Shh, Charley. Don’t let the megalomaniacs hear that kind of talk. It’ll only encourage them.”

**Magic/Fairy Tale**  
The clock strikes twelve and the magic ends. Charley’s left out in the road with a smashed pumpkin, one useless glass slipper, and no hope of any prince coming after. 

But she remembers the ball, the lights, the prince who was her partner for the night, and she knows it was worth it. The dream will always live on in her head. She walks away down the road, barefoot.

**. . . In SPACE!!**

“I’m supposed to believe you appeared in the middle of a dirigible using _that_?” Charley waved a hand at the cardboard box with a big red button on the top. “It’s made out of cardboard – it wouldn’t fool a three year old!”

The intruder in the oddly shaped suit with the even more oddly shaped head, pressed the button just as Charley put out a hand to steady the brightly dressed stranger – the R101 seemed to be having some jolly worrying turbulence.

“Goodness,” said Charley, moments later when the world had turned black and absolutely everything had changed. She was standing in a peculiar cockpit staring out the window at stars. “Oh heavens. Are we really in space? Can you _do_ that with a cardboard box? Gosh.”

“Hi,” said a woman’s face appearing on a screen close by. “Not that I want to be a party pooper, but something you did back there made causality start to unravel. I estimate we’ve got about five minutes before the universe implodes.”

Before any of them could say anything, everything flashed white, the face on the screen said, “Wait, maybe I meant five sec–” and then Charley found it was true what they said: when you were about to die your whole life flew in front of your eyes. She just hadn’t expected it to go backwards quite that literally.

**Historical**

“Do you trust me?” asked the stranger, the stowaway on this ill-fated royal party ship.

Charley shivered, standing next to him on the deck as he stretched out a hand to her. The storm was growing worse and both salt water and rain water blew into her face and made it a battle to speak. Her tunic was soaked through and she was glad of her disguise; her customary skirts would have been a sodden weight dragging against the boards of the ship. “I’ve only just met you.”

“True, but then so is the reverse.” He met her gaze. “I’m willing to take a chance. And I don’t think we should stay here.”

He did seem to be the only other sober person left on board. Charley tightened her jaw and took his hand – and together they jumped from _The White Ship_ into the wicked waves below.

**Canon Divergence**

Charlotte Pollard pressed her fingers against the window glass and watched the raindrops running past the tips of her nails, tantalisingly close, yet never touching. She’d been so close to living her long-time dream, disguising herself as a boy and running off in search of adventure, to get to Singapore, but she’d hesitated.

It turned out that hesitation had saved her life. She shivered, as if somewhere in another universe Fate had walked over her non-existent grave.

**Crime/Detectives**

“Gosh,” said Charley. “It’s another dead body.”

“We do seem to be falling over them a lot today. What do you deduce, Miss Pollard?”

“Well, he’s dead. I can tell because of that whopping knife sticking out of his chest. Urgh. Poor man.”

“Splendid powers of observation. Anything else?”

“I thought you were supposed to be the great detective and I was only here to take notes? Aren’t you going to dazzle me with your brilliance and explain how you just know the murderer was a left-handed man from Yorkshire because of the angle of the blade and the stray crumbs of Yorkshire pudding stuck to his sleeve?”

“Miss Pollard, we are standing over this poor fellow’s corpse. Have a little respect for the dead. Besides, I don’t think that knife was what killed him.”

Charley had been learning a few things in the days since she’d started as secretary and general assistant to a private detective. “Oh. Not enough blood, you mean.”

“Quite,” said Dr Smith, and knelt down to examine the corpse. “Mind you, you might be onto something with that left-handed business…”

**Supernatural**

The estate agent had been full of stories about the old house being haunted. “One of the daughters of the house,” he’d said, “back before the war. Tragic.” It was part of the reason that Dr John Smith, being a paranormal investigator and author of six popular books on the subject, had decided to take it.

Sometimes he found his papers blown out of order – or, actually, more often, strangely in order in a way he never managed. At other times, he heard the wind echoing through the house when not even a breeze was stirring outside. But he never saw a ghost. Probably just draughts and old beams settling – all the sorts of things that fooled lesser minds than his.

The ghost of Charlotte Pollard perched on the edge of Dr Smith’s desk and sighed. A sheet of paper beside her fluttered, but the writer didn’t so much as lift his head. 

“Some paranormal investigator you are,” she said, and pondered what to do to get him to notice her next.

**Romance Novel**

Charley had considered running away disguised as a boy, but a spate of novel reading had made her reconsider. If one wanted to seek adventure, this was clearly the way to do it and didn’t require a lot of speaking in a gruff voice that would have been bound to make her throat hurt after a while.

As the carriage disappeared away back down the drive behind her, leaving her standing in the sleet and rain, she wondered if perhaps it was a bit muffle-headed to put so much faith in her favourite authors of gothic novels. Then the moment of doubt passed: she drew in her breath and knocked on the door before her. The house was certainly gloomy enough. It even had a small tower on one end.

When it opened, she blinked in the sudden light from within and said, breathlessly, “I came about your advertisement – I’m the governess.”

“Oh, dear,” said the man who had opened the door. He surely could not be the butler, but the master of a place like this would never be opening his own door – would he? He had longish hair and a velvet jacket. Perhaps he was a poet, like Lord Byron? The advertisement had not contained a great many particulars. “I’m so sorry. I completely forgot to remove the notice.”

Charley shivered, her spirits plunging downwards along with the incessant raindrops. “Oh, no. What shall I do?”

“Well, I suggest you come on in out of that rain and we’ll decide in the morning.”

Charley took a step forwards and then paused. “Wait. This isn’t a dastardly plot or something and you’re going to ravish me?”

“Absolutely no ravishing, I promise,” he said, pressing the door back for her to enter. He frowned. “Unless you _wanted_ to be ravished, of course. I suppose I could oblige if your heart was set on it, but I prefer a round of knucklebones myself.”

Charley wasn’t sure this was going to prove exactly gothic, but it certainly promised to be interesting, and that was good enough for her.


End file.
